Be More Kind is musically inventive in its use of punk, folk, soul, and electronica but deceptively simple in its message, which is as complex as the times we live in.

Complete and correct, Goldenheart is a triumph.

Those who don't process the lyrics will be missing a lauded part of the McCombs experience, Mangy Love, arguably more than ever, works as a musical expression alone, mixing the sometimes caustic lyrics and roguish indie touches with an overriding smooth '70s veneer. For those who take it all in, the album engages both the intellectual and aural pleasure centers.

Strange to Explain sounds like the result of carefully considered choices in songwriting and production. Without losing the unfiltered emotion that makes them so compelling, Woods reach a new maturity with these songs. Fifteen years into a tirelessly curious evolution, the band sound more comfortable and surefooted here than ever before.

A collection of more shimmering, weightless pop that is nostalgic for yesterday's visions of the future but remains on the cutting edge of contemporary music.

What is impressive is that the trio manages to sound contemporary using only piano, bass, and drums, and without resorting to electronic gimmicks.

Just when the strings, piano, and rainstorm effects threaten to turn Sing the Sorrow into a My Dying Bride album, there is a burst of hardcore like "Dancing Through Sunday" to recall California pioneers of the genre like Dead Kennedys or SST transplants Husker Du.

While it is neither as monumental as "Donuts" nor as exemplary as the "Dillanthology" discs, Jay Stay Paid is close to a must for any casual Dilla admirer.

These songs are nearly as wide-ranging and comprehensive as an actual atlas, but Cox keeps charting new territory.

Ryder-Jones deserves to make the leap from imaginary films to the real thing.

The rapper's skills aren't in question on The Lost Boy, but the album sometimes overshoots in its ambition, aiming for too many styles to hit them all with excellence. It's still a strong collection, and when Cordae strikes a perfect balance of mellow production and lyrical power on standout tracks like "We Gon Make It," it points to even more fully formed work ahead from a strong talent just getting started.

On Deceiver, DIIV have done the work, and the results are new levels of emotional and musical depth.

This trio displays a kinetic spontaneity even as their discipline shines through. As individuals, they are fluid and attentive; they react to and guide one another sensitively, confidently, and instinctively. Under Sorey's leadership, they reveal that these old nuggets still have plenty of mystery in them ripe for discovery in the right hands.

As an artist of uncommon ability, he has learned from its hallowed lineage and storied past that in order for it to evolve, it cannot be reined in; it must be free to roam in order to create its future. His visionary work on this album opens the gate wide on that frontier.

What's particularly compelling about Nérija's take on cross-pollinated jazz is that it never sounds like they are trying to imitate one particular sound or era. Instead, they offer a set of contemporary tracks that feel connected to their diverse London-roots.

Ode to Joy reveals that after their sabbatical, Wilco are more than willing to explore the boundaries of their music, and they do so with the confidence and sense of daring that has marked their best work from Being There onward.

Though it's often a slower burn than Who the Power, Internal Working Model reaffirms Moss is an artist with something to say and a distinctive way of saying it.

The sprawl of motion, texture, and color is reined in by immense, emotive lyricism and dynamic group interplay, making this musical "letter" to his vanishing nation well worth repeated listening.

An album that's a noisy, abrasive joy from front to back.

Even if it's not as cohesive as their two previous albums, it's some of their best (and certainly most ambitious) work.

Overall, The Animal Spirits feels very organic, brought about by the spontaneity of the performances, the brief window of time in which it was recorded, and Holden's own evolutionary arc. It also offers a glimpse into the deeper corners of his psyche, peeling back another layer to reveal just how colorful his imagination can be.

He's as present and raw beneath the computer voice as he's ever been, but with these darkroom synth tracks, Sparhawk makes his audience work a little harder to locate him.

With Sentenced to Life, Black Breath have crafted a no-nonsense slab of modern hardcore that draws from a diverse set of rules, but yields to none of them.

Even though A Place to Bury Strangers have been bringing the noise back to shoegaze and post-punk for years, they're still finding new forms of expression. That they can create a career peak like See Through You two decades after forming makes them all the more inspiring.

The resulting songs easily clear the bar for earnest expressions of affection, going into awkward, getting-to-know-you encounters, breakups, fears, and those small, secret moments when one's love grows stronger.

Ultimately, Bleed is the Necks' most formless, abstract, and focused album, one that that points toward a brave new direction.

A deceptively artful examination of, and expression of, depression.

Near perfect and a step forward as well, Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future belongs on Underworld's top shelf.

Like with any of Haggard's great albums, much of the pleasure lies in the details, whether it's the sly lyrical turns of phrase in his writing or in the suppleness of his performance, things I Am What I Am has in spades.

It's a fine starting point for someone looking to discover Smith, but even if you have all his albums, it serves as a greatest-hits collection of sorts and only confirms just how awful not having him here truly is.

But if 12 Songs does occasionally come across as slightly affected in its intent and presentation, it also is inarguably Neil Diamond's best set of songs in a long, long time.

Here and throughout Masculin Feminin, Blonde Redhead's sense of melody and drama sets them apart, especially on La Mia Vita Violenta.

The stark and brutally frank "I Don't Want Children" impresses with its sonic intimacy, as does the mercurial "Sundog," one of a few selections that utilizes the sounds of the remote location's flora and fauna--wind through the trees, birds chirping, and dogs barking in the distance--lending the proceedings a bucolic, almost Terrence Malick-ian vibe, and adding even more mystery to what is truly a singular piece of work.

New Magic is a different animal than Son Little [the self-titled], but both albums are products of a strikingly gifted artist, and listeners who want to hear a smart and passionate musician take R&B into new, thoughtful places owe it to themselves to give New Magic a careful listen.

Oh My God struggles to balance the austere with the earthly and would have been a better record with about four or five fewer songs. Still, though, it comes close to its ambitious goals of double-album greatness and the highlights represent some of Morby's most focused and wizened work yet.

These are songs that make you want to roll the windows down, light up a smoke, and pound the dashboard in agreement.

While tracks like the fractured, jarring "Sidestep Summer" are as uneasy as Blumberg's previous two records, On&On is ultimately much more hopeful, if not quite inviting or accessible.

This gift for distilling complex emotions into relatable songs is just as vital to Beabadoobee's music as her rapidly evolving sound, and both shine on Fake It Flowers.

Not many groups sound more mysterious four albums into their career than when they began, but these shifting, shadowy visions suggest Vanishing Twin have more tricks up their collective sleeve.

This is some of Saint Vincent's most complicated music, but its fearless creativity rewards repeated listening, as Clark has few rivals when it comes to seducing ears and challenging minds at the same time.

Dark in tone and intimate in presentation, The Trackless Woods is unique in DeMent's catalog.

For their part, Sharp and Keith continue to swap guitar licks and lead vocals, uniting in loose harmony and occasionally dialing up the tempo on tracks like the Keith-led rocker "Sally Rose" and the mellow yet jaunty Sharp tune "Strange Insistence." For the most part, though, Out of Range stays in first or second gear as the panoramic landscapes pass languidly by.

While fans will appreciate a self-aware look behind the curtain, there's enough raw energy and emotion here to hook in plenty of newcomers.

Even if it's not quite as varied as Beabadoobee's debut album, Our Extended Play is still a welcome follow-up to Fake It Flowers' success.

It's a new and fantastic chapter in an ongoing body of uncontainable work, one where Birgy has never hesitated to dive into her own psyche and wrestle what she finds there back up to the surface for all to see.

Hinds pull off their reboot with daring and style, in the process making a record easily good enough to stand proudly alongside their best work.

To Love Is to Live is an unabashedly, thrillingly wild ride, and as Beth throws everything she has at her audience, she fully reveals the multitudes she contains.

Some tracks don't fully conclude so much as abruptly end, adding to the dis-ease and resulting in an album that is as compelling to feel as it is to listen to.

His most refined batch of animated pop yet. He triangulates somewhere between Ben Folds and Charlie Puth, albeit with eccentricity to spare and a better feel for the funk than either musician.

With 2022's Misadventures of Doomscroller, Dawes have crafted one their shortest and tightest albums to date that also happens to be one of their most enjoyably experimental.

Among the many earnest earworms here (the cringier "KFM" notwithstanding) are songs like "God Person" ("I'm not a god person/But I'm never not searchin'") and "Don't Do Me Good," an early single featuring her friend Kacey Musgraves. Mournful but defiant, the latter song makes catchy country-rock of tough sentiments.

It's a richly orchestrated, superbly crafted effort that veers between several different emotional states before its time is up.

Not only is Screen Violence Chvrches’ finest work since The Bones of What You Believe, it’s also their most purposeful. It feels like they took stock of who they want to be and what they want to say, and these epic songs about letting go but holding onto the ability to feel make for a stunning creative rebirth.

Even when the tracks sound more sketch-like, not fully formed--2013 single "Airglow Fires" is a trifle by Cutler's standard--the sheer moods are appealing.

Amyl and the Sniffers is a promising opening salvo from a young band who match a rabid hunger with the chops to back it up.

She Walks in Beauty is a loving testimony to the power and lasting vigor of the Romantic poets, and also a reminder of how lucky we are to have an artist as gifted as Marianne Faithfull giving us this remarkable tutorial.

He's building upon the past, both his own and the larger traditions of his homeland, both spiritual and actual, and that gives lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar a bewitching depth. It's an album to get lost in.

Shut Up I Am Dreaming is pure bedroom art-pop with a thin Britpop glaze that is as poignant and self-effacing as it is self conscious and pretentious.

Country funk, no matter how one defines it, might not be a real musical style per se, but as presented here, and in the first volume of this series, it emerges as a reminder that no musical style stands in isolation.

Offering a newly recorded version of Epic by a bunch of different artists turns out to not only be a clever idea, but it also shows how versatile and strong Van Etten's writing is.

The most exciting and best rock & roll record of 2004.

Be Still Please is another hidden treasure from one of the truly important bands, and persons, in pop music today.

The stylistic switch-ups are clever and effective without coming across as forcefully out of character.

The clearer, uninterrupted version of the album sounds absolutely gorgeous, and actually gets better as it progresses, as Voigt saves some of the most recognizable elements for the second half, while also adding new details such as the eerie choir which appears during the tenth track.

It's rough-around-the-edges fun, with the warmth of familiarity and kinship that Neil Young & Crazy Horse have built by playing together for more than half a century.

God's Son isn't quite the masterpiece is could be -- mostly because Nas is so self-involved, sometimes seemingly intoxicated by his kingliness -- but it's surely one of the most remarkable albums of the Queensbridge rapper's highlight-filled career, just a notch or so below Illmatic and Stillmatic.

While it goes further musically than their two previous outings, it contains enough of the past to exist in a new space that claims the terrain between Watershed and Heritage. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, although Snaith may sound novel expanding upon his indie forebears of ten years ago, when he begins conjuring the ghosts of Krautrock ("A Final Warning," "Bees") or trip-hop ("Lord Leopard"), as he does here, he's entering the company of talented producers who have ploughed the same ground.

There's little that moves one to sing along here, unfortunately. The tempos are all slow, dramatic, and melancholy.

A weird psychedelic mindset is woven through everything, and even though everything constantly seems on the verge of combustion, the songs on Fits always manage to hold together and work themselves out with exciting, engaging results.

There's a soft-spoken power to Metals, even if its songs are more liquid and atmospheric than the title suggests.

The loosest record yet in Tindersticks' decade-long existence.

It's a noticeably more focused effort. Though it lacks Good Morning Spider's sprawling brilliance, it's possibly Linkous' most effective, and affecting, collection of songs.

Gold and Green may be the band's most approachable album, but as with all their releases, it's a charming reminder that experimental music doesn't have to sound like it was hard work to make.

The Door is a beautifully mysterious and deeply satisfying entry in the ECM canon and a very auspicious debut.

As carefully crafted as it is, this is the group's most accessible record yet. And it's a damn fine one at that.

Ask the Dust is one of the more interesting and compelling electro albums of 2012.

This is the worthy sequel to the group's Madlib collaboration In Search of Stoney Jackson, and that's meant as high praise.

Discount the general masses not attuned to UFOmammut's unique but long-established formula, and their dedicated followers shan't have to expend too many of their remaining neurons grasping the full enormity of the band's accomplishment, even though this second sibling falls just short of its elder twin overall.

Fortress is a driving album that not only doesn't feel tired or stale, but is a monster of an album that makes a pretty solid case for being some of Alter Bridge's strongest and most dynamic work to date.

They make everything work, really, and Inventions ends up being one of the better garage psych revival records anyone's likely to hear in 2013.

Strangers wavers between the sad and joyous sides of life, but Felice finds something out of the ordinary wherever he looks, and this record confirms this drummer just so happens to be a songwriter and frontman of the first order.

Pick any track off The Golden Age of Glitter, drop it into the middle of the Dazed and Confused soundtrack, and not only would it fit, you'd probably turn it up. That's a serious compliment for this particular band.

Black Beauty is one of the strongest and most consistent albums of his hard rock period, and if it isn't quite a lost classic, it's the missing link between Vindicator and Love's Reel to Real; it's nearly as good as the former and genuinely superior to the latter.

Subtle, compellingly human, and bittersweet, this is easily Landry's best work.

Ashes & Dust is a worthy and welcome addition to Haynes' catalog.

Winning results on From Far Enough Away Everything Sounds Like the Ocean.

South Broadway Athletic Club seems like a typical Bottle Rockets album on the surface, but dig a bit deeper and you'll find a set of songs as strong and emotionally powerful as anything this band has delivered since 24 Hours a Day.

As personal and inward-gazing as Ryder-Jones' songs are, he imbues them with a weary comfort, inviting listeners along rather than detaching himself, and if making fine albums like West Kirby County Primary is his form of therapy, he's bound for success.

Rain Crow doesn't blaze many new trails for Tony Joe White, but it leaves no doubt that he's still the king of his own swampy sound, and he's not getting older, he's getting deeper.

The Family isn't a grand statement, but an intimate one. Despite the dark threads that run through it and bind it, this collection is as moving as it is harrowing, as tender as it is tenacious. It's an album Arthur had to make, and as such is completely redemptive.

Unseen may not cheer you up, but it will compel and fascinate anyone with an appetite for great songwriting.

Altogether, the album's palette and Jacklin's cracking, pensive delivery land her in a sphere with heavy-hitters such as Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen, with a touch of Lucinda Williams, making it a must for fans of thoughtful indie folk.

Though hushed, lush, and intimate psych-folk may not have been anyone's first choice for where Hanson's path might lead next, The Unborn Capitalist from Limbo is beautiful and strange, and proves to be a trip well worth taking.

While Impressions does seem a little weighed down, it's really a document of their struggle, making their second attempt to leave the runway somewhat relatable; inevitably, it's hard not to root for them as they spread their wings independently.

I'm a Harmony isn't the revelation that Parallelograms was, but it's not a letdown, either; this is the work of an artist whose singular creative viewpoint hasn't dimmed with time. She still has a great deal to say, and those who loved her debut will discover she hasn't lost her touch.

It's chock-full of refreshing, sophisticated ideas, all balanced by an empathic, emphatic inclusiveness that engages the listener at both musical and emotional levels.

Outsiders has a strong foundation but sounds effervescent, a combination that frequently results in giddy, intoxicating pop, which is what this album is.